Posted on 06/22/2009 5:33:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do you believe in God? Really? And you're willing to admit it in public?
Oops. Sorry, for a moment I slipped back into the arrogant Atheism of my youth.
Before my parents had children, they decided to raise their kids in a secular home. We had gifts at Christmas time and chocolate covered matzoh during Passover, but there was no religion and certainly no God.
When I was in grade school, God was just a kind of nondescript character who popped up in Little House on the Prairie books from time to time. He seemed like a decent enough fellow, but was more or less a bit player who didn't have much to say.
After my grandfather died when I was seven, his Baptist minister lifted me up in his arms and told me, "It's all right, Grandpa's with God now." At that moment, I could feel my dress was hiked up in the back and all I could think about was pulling it back down. But later, I asked around and discovered that God was our Heavenly father, whatever that was supposed to mean.
I figured, who better to ask about my Heavenly father than my earthly father, but when I did he laughed.
He wasn't amused in a "kids say the darnedest things" kind of way. He was laughing derisively at the idea that my mother's family believed in God. And thus began my introduction to Atheism.
There are people who call themselves atheist who are simply nonbelievers, and then there are the big "A" Atheists for whom Atheism is almost a religion. This quasi-religious doctrine isn't neutral on the existence of other religions; rather, Atheism is a virulently anti-theistic creed characterized by sneering contempt for religion and a profoundly dogmatic bigotry toward people of faith.
Want to know how Atheists see the rest of us?
I grew up learning from my father that Atheism is rational, and therefore, religious belief is irrational; Atheism is defined by logic, religious faith by fantasy; and science is real while religion is make believe. Faith, I was taught, requires a willful stifling of reason.
The Torah, the Gospels, the Qur'an? All woefully inaccurate, laughably inconsistent fictions used to encourage belief in an illusion for the purpose of social control.
My curiosity in religion surfaced again in seventh grade when several of my friends were planning Bat Mitzvahs. Surely my friends weren't ignorant enough to actually believe in God, were they? The answer was no. For most of these Reform Jews, this celebration marked the official end to the tedium of Hebrew school. Most of their families were Ethical Culturists with a recreational interest in preserving their Jewish cultural identity. In other words, they too were Atheists.
By the time I reached high school, having had little contact with religion, I was convinced that people of faith were credulous and unenlightened. They gravitated toward soothing tales of God and afterlife to help them deal with their own mortality. At best, I considered belief in God an anachronism, a quaint vestige of days gone by, on par with superstitions about wicked thoughts causing birth defects.
At my extremely liberal college, I was exposed to even more militant Atheism. It was there that I learned the mere whiff of religiosity is worthy of denigration. Many of the people I met approached religion with something between disdain and loathing, and considered all religious belief a form of fanaticism. Christians in particular were characterized as knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing fundies (and that was in polite company.)
Fortunately my mother taught me enough manners that I kept my bias to myself.
In this new environment, my Atheism was more than evidence of good reasoning, it was a socially desirable badge of intellectual superiority. Make no mistake: Atheists think they're smarter than you. Atheism isn't simple skepticism. It is a certainty that believers are wrong, and by extension, intellectually inferior. Religion, especially Judeo-Christian religion, is nothing more than a crutch for dupes.
But Atheists aren't content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they've come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.
You see, for liberal Atheists, the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy?
And so, they accuse local governments of trampling the Constitution in the name of God and they find subliminal Christian iconography in political ads. They wring new meanings from Thomas Jefferson's notion of separation between church and state, and condemn our country's motto and the status of Christmas as a national holiday. But above all, Atheists stoke fear among religious and nonreligious alike that conservatives view government as a tool to force religion down your throat.
Pope-slandering buffoon Bill Maher, something of a patron saint among Atheists, has called religion "the ultimate hustle." Last fall, Maher's fellow liberal Chris Matthews, a self-described Catholic, roundly criticized Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for talking about prayer in a "secular environment" and complained that she made the Republican Party look more like a church tent than a big tent. In March, Matthews complained, "Why does everything sound like the '700 Club' with this Party now?" Such examples of anti-religious bias can be found every day on cable news, network television, and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
As my politics strayed right of center after college, I realized I wanted no part of that Maher/Matthews worldview based in elitism and the ridicule of others. I made the transition from Atheist to atheist to agnostic, and have since discovered why it is often said that religion is experiential.
There was a time when I would have preferred any manner of torture to admitting the possibility of a higher power. These days, I'm proud to say I lost my faith in the Atheist creed.
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Jenn Q. Public writes about news, politics, and the seedy underbelly of liberalism at JennQPublic.com.
And we see that even now as we look at the direction our country is heading in as it rejects its Judeo-Christian heritage.
We are going away from the liberty that belief system provided to the communist/socialist form or government the is inexorably entwined with atheism.
The more atheistic we become, the more communistic we become.
The Founding Fathers were largely Deists.
They were merely a shade away from Atheism.
Thomas Jefferson, I might add the following
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith, August, 6, 1816
But would you think the intervention was from a divine
being? Or would you pigeonhole your experience into a
natural explanation...such as “I was sleepy”, “I had an
hallucination, somebody drugged me, it was a “light show”
etc...Be careful, your philosophical and epistomological
suppositions may be only partially correct,and may
actually “protect” you from a divine encounter if only for
a short time.
The Bible reveals the downward spiral of the individual (and the country) without God:
Rom 1:20-32
For the unseen things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being realized by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, for them to be without excuse.
Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were thankful. But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things.
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. For they changed the truth of God into a lie, and they worshiped and served the created thing more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this cause, God gave them up to dishonorable affections. For even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another; males with males working out shamefulness, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error.
And even as they did not think fit to have God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things not right, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; being full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, evil habits, becoming whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, braggarts, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, perfidious, without natural affection, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous order of God, that those practicing such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but have pleasure in those practicing them.
I'm not sure it isn't as Catholic thing as well. I attend a prayer group[ with mostly Catholics, and every other religion (Buddishm, Islam, Taoism) is accepted and A-OK; but those silly,ridiculous, fundamentalist prots !!! (I've actually heard that very phrase!) Just saying.
I think it's a human thing to divide ourselves into groups, and put everyone else into those "others". It gives a feeling of security.
You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. You are simply projecting your disappointment with some people in a group onto all people in that group.
You, in your omniscience, are "sure" that I fit in one of your boxes, even though you don't know me from Adam.
Have you noticed that for 2000+ years there have been believers? How is that possible?
How profound, God sent His own Son to be born of a woman and to live on earth for 30+ years. This is the merging of God and man. That Son was not sent as royalty - He was born in a manger, was a carpenter and only preached for 3 years. He also was treated cruelly and hung on the cross when God could have saved Him from that.
He then is buried and in 3 days arose from the dead. If this is not true, then no part of Christianity is true and there is no afterlife.
Why was that necessary? What are we to learn from that?
That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us so that we could be made pure enough to live with God forever. No other sacrifices needed.
That something is required from man because man is not good enough to be in the presence of God.
All man has to do is do what God told him to do - repent of your sins, confess your belief that Jesus is the Son of God, be baptised for the remission of those sins, and you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to reside in you and you then start your walk through life with Jesus.
Simple. Why would baptism cleanse you, why are you required to confess your faith? Because it shows you are doing what God said to do and that is what does the saving.
Same as all through the Bible when God gave instructions. It was not the duty - it was the willingness to do what He said to do.
So, how could one that does not believe ever see the comfort, the joy, the purpose of a Christian? The unbelief cuts one off from the Holy Spirit and a relationship with Jesus.
The seed did not grow in those of unbelief. But, that seed may be watered in the future by others.
Great! Profound.
>>I’m not sure it isn’t as Catholic thing as well<<
Don’t you consider Catholics to be Christian?
>>Karl Marx may have been an atheist, but if he bakes a cake, does that make all atheists, bakers? Learn to separate one point from another.<<
My FRiend, you are sticking your head in the sand.
With the words of Karl Marx, and the actions of those who follow him, some things are self evident.
Show me where Communism encourages Christianity and we have some facts.
Which means only people who believe in something can ever be hypocrites. Larry Flint, for instance, will never be guilty of hypocrisy. It's easy not to be a hypocrite --- just have no values, morals or beliefs and you will never be a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy is after all, the price that vice pays to virtue.
I do also. I am always turning on the news and the only group to stand up against abortion, etc., is the Catholic church. I admire them for that.
I thoroughly disagree with their beliefs but I admire that.
If we do not speak up against murder and gross wrongs, we are not presenting the other way.
Many in religions are taking a pacifist route - that we are part of God's kingdom and should not be concerned with man's kingdom. I find that hard. If we do not protect what we have and stand up - we will not have it. And, we were given the right of free speech - what is wrong with using it?
The Left was already using this as a tool at the time of the french revolution. Personally, I don't waste a moment on the issue of hypocrisy. I weigh a person's stated principles when I judge his ideas. His behavior is something that belongs in a different conversation.
>>I thoroughly disagree with their beliefs but I admire that.<<
You are my kind of Non-Catholic. I respect you more than words can say!
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